Cinema: The New Pictures, Aug. 5, 1957

A Hatful of Rain (20th Century-Fox), the latest of Hollywood's dope
operas, is much the best of the hopheaded lot. Its predecessors luridly
flaunted syringes, outsize needles and puncture-mottled golden arms;
their heroes inevitably kicked the habit for good in a rosy last-reel
vision of a better tomorrow.

Rain scraps this brand of opiated logic in favor of cold-turkey realism.
The movie zeroes in on a nightmare that is real in tens of thousands of
U.S. homes. This particular private hell is an apartment in a big
Manhattan housing project. Don Murray is a...